I had some difficulty in finding my way to the cathedral--strangely enough too, for when at last I reached the Dom-Platz, there, rising high into the air, and approached by an almost endless flight of steps, stood the magnificent choir of the cathedral, surmounted by its singular triple arrangement of central steeples, and by its side, and on the same high plateau, the church of S. Severus emulating, I should almost say, aping, the cathedral both in height and design very curiously. The east end of the cathedral, built on the precipitous edge of a rock, has been under-built with a terrace supported upon arches, which, concealing the natural rock, gives it an effect of extraordinary height. These arches have been all modernized, but there are traces here and there which prove the arrangement to be original. Let us mount the flight of steps which lead by the entire length of the north side of the choir to the porch, and we shall see reason to class one at least of the architects of Erfurt, with the greatest of his race. No position can be conceived which would present more difficulty to one who wished to show the doors of his church to the people who might gather in crowds in the Dom-Platz, and seeing nothing but the tall east end of their church and the sharp perspective of its side, shrink from the attempt to find a door at the end of the long flight of steps before them. Every one must have felt how those great foreign doorways call upon all to enter; they are always open, guarded on either side by kings, and saints, and martyrs, and revealing glimpses, precious because vague, of glorious interiors and worshippers within on their knees. They call upon all to enter, and who can refuse? At Erfurt, however, one might have deemed it impossible that people should be made to feel this, but yet it has been done, and done nobly and magnificently. There are no transepts, and so against the eastern bay of the north aisle of the nave is set a triangular porch of grand size and lovely design and detail. Its base rests against the church, and its two sides, jutting out at angles of sixty degrees from the wall, show both from the west and from the east the whole width of its two glorious doorways. So, as one gazes up from the Dom-Platz, and wonders at the singularity of the position of the church and the beauty of the choir, one’s eye follows up the track of those who ascend the toilsome flight of steps till it rests upon the doorway at their summit, and one is led at once to find one’s way through its great opening into the nave of the church. Sad to say, wanton havoc has destroyed much of the more delicate ornaments of this most noble piece of early fourteenth century architecture. Of the nave little can be said, save that it is entirely unworthy and unsatisfactory; between it and the choir is a great mass of wall, pierced only by a narrow arch opening into the choir, and supporting a curious combination of